But, On the Other Hand

We always have an opportunity to do better than we did yesterday.

Act One: The Play

Daddy is taking me to see my first Broadway musical. It’s called Fiddler on the Roof, and we’re going together, and Nanny is meeting us at the theater for the matinee. A matinee is when the play is in the afternoon, not late at night. We couldn’t go at night because tomorrow’s a school day, and I can’t stay up that late. I know all the songs by heart because I play the record over and over. And then I play it some more. I sing along in my bedroom, pretending to be all the characters in the play. My favorite songs are Tradition, If I Were a Rich Man, and Miracle of Miracles. The song about Frumah Sarah is scary, but I love that one, too. I sing the boy parts better than the girl parts because I can’t sing the high notes. My dad told me that it’s probably not a great idea for me to sing along when we go to the play. That’s gonna be really hard, but I’ll try.

We got to the theatre a little early and waited on the sidewalk for Nanny to arrive. Dad lit a cigarette, smoked the whole thing, and then lit another. I looked at the photographs of the actors in a glass case on the side of the building. Papa pulled up in his brand-new blue Caddy and Nanny got out of the car but first made sure she had enough sucking candies in her giant beige pocketbook for all of us and that she had her hankie. Papa waved hello to me, and drove off, cigar tightly clenched between his teeth. He’d be back to pick her up in a couple hours.

Nanny’s all aflutter. I love that word, “aflutter,” I learned it in school last week. She’s all aflutter because this is her favorite show. She’s seen it 6 times already, but only with her beloved Zero Mostel. He’s not in the show anymore. Nanny’s a little disappointed that she won’t see him again. She heard the guy who took his place is good, too, but he’s no Zero. When she said it, it made me laugh. Zero.

The usher, who’s wearing a black dress with a fancy lace collar, takes us into the theater, gives us our Playbills, and clicks her flashlight on to point to the seats in the row we’ll be sitting in. I’m in the middle between Dad and Nanny.

My heart starts pounding when I hear the orchestra warming up. When’s it going to start?

The lights dim to darkness and the overture begins. I don’t like the overtures so much. When I listen to the record at home, I skip over it. It’s boring and there are no words.

And, there he is! Tevye the Dairyman makes his entrance and begins to sing. Tradition. The music gives me goosebumps and I almost feel like crying. There’s something so familiar about it, and it isn’t because I know the songs already. It feels like the music lives inside of me. It’s joyful and sad at the same time, and I don’t know why. It’s just a feeling. I try very, very hard not to sing, but it’s so tempting. I want to jump up on the stage and sing with all of them.

The play is funny, and the singing and dancing is amazing. I think the whole show is going to be like that, but that’s not what happens. There are serious parts too. At one point, the police come, and Nanny whispers in my ear, “those are the Cossacks. The bad men. They killed my grandfather.”

I keep looking over at Nanny. She’s concentrating on each word, every musical note, and once in a while, she reaches into her bag for a hard candy. She makes so much noise when she unwraps them, the sound of the cellophane crinkling seems so loud. The people behind us shush her twice. Her handkerchief is wadded tightly in her fist, and it makes me think of Papa and his clenched cigar.

At the end of the play, all the people in the town have to leave because they’re hated, because they’re Jewish. They sing the last song, called Anatevka, which is the name of their shtetl (that’s Yiddish for village). They walk in a big circle with all their belongings, a wheelbarrow piled high, people carrying suitcases and samovars, parents carrying their children. Everyone is sad. They’re leaving the only home they’ve ever known. I hear someone crying and I look to my right, and my Nanny is sitting there, with tears rolling down her face. She’s trying not to make any noise, just like me trying not to sing. I’ve never seen her cry before. She sat in her seat, her shoulders jerking up and down as she tried to cry quietly. I’m pretty sure I understand why she’s so sad. I looked around the audience and saw other people who were old like Nanny; and they were crying, too.

When my Nanny was 9 years old, she came to America from a town just like Anatevka. The Cossacks did kill her Zayde, her grandfather. She told me that a bad man held her Zayde by his long, long beard, dragging him through the town while he was riding his horse. That’s how her grandfather died.

Act Two: The reasoning of a very anxious nine-year-old. She had it all figured out, except…

As a kid I thought about Fiddler a lot. I was also obsessed with all things having to do with the Holocaust. I looked at photographs of skeletal people, who were often just cloaked in their skin or some rags, women with shaved heads, tattoos on their arms. I wanted to know about the people who didn’t like Jews, who hated them, who hated me because I was Jewish. I learned everything I could about the Holocaust. I didn’t understand what Jews did to the people who wanted them dead. I didn’t understand why more people didn’t leave when they saw what was happening, just like my grandmother did in 1919. They didn’t leave and they didn’t fight. And I didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand when Tommy Mazzola sneered at me in third grade and called me a kike with so much hatred in his voice. I had to ask my mother what the word meant. The only thing I knew about that word was that it wasn’t an endearment.

I also fretted about Israel. I’ve never been a Zionist. I’ll never be a Zionist, because I believe we should all live in the world together. Tevye and his village were people of the Diaspora. We’ve always been people of the Diaspora. I think my belief is rooted in the anxiety I experienced when I learned about Israel. It was founded as a Jewish homeland in 1948 after World War II ended. A way to say, “never again.” I was a child lucky enough to have parents born in the U.S. There were many casualties of the Holocaust in my extended family.

This was my fear: after losing six million Jewish people in World War II, why would we want the remaining Jewish world population to concentrate itself in one small location, so that we could be an easy target, surrounded by countries who hate us? I learned about the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school, and from the books I read. What would stop these people, the bad people, from dropping a big bomb on Israel? Poof, no more Jews! It was a very bad idea to my 9-year old way of thinking. Still is.

Act Three: I’m 64 years old.

I’m Jewish, I’m a woman, and I’m queer. I don’t want to be afraid of what’s coming, because I don’t know what’s coming. But it sure looks like history’s repeating itself. I think back to the question I asked as a child, “why didn’t they fight? Why didn’t they leave?” Now I understand it better. They didn’t leave because it was their home, their heart place, and it was unfathomable to comprehend the slaughter that would come. The loss, the destruction. The pain.

I hope we can learn to do better before it’s too late. Our world view has to change. No separation, just unity. Respect for differences and room for all to be themselves. When I have to fill out a form that asks for my race, I choose the box labeled “other” and write in “human.” We’re human. We’re equals. The othering, the killing must stop. And Israel? Israel must stop using the story of our victimhood as Jews as an excuse to oppress, imprison, and kill others not like them.

In the play, Tevye wrestles with a changing world, inside the shtetl and outside, too. He ask questions, examines his conscience, talks to God, and says, “on the other hand” more times than he has hands, because there are more than 2 choices in any situation. Israel has an opportunity to do things differently, to foster a new paradigm, and release it’s grip, to let others live. To be an example of love and not of domination. Jews around the world have that opportunity, too. We need people who’ll lead with compassion, not greed, not hatred, not fear.

When I was a kid, I knew about Anne Frank and her story, but I couldn’t read her book until I was an adult. I was afraid of what I’d find, and I was sure it would crush me. I knew the line from the book that reads, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. I do think that most people are good at heart but there IS true evil in the world. We can’t forget that. We must keep our eyes open. As each day passes it feels more and more frightening to me, more reminiscent of what happened in the 1930s and 40s. The targets of the hatred may be different right now, and I say right now on purpose. The victims of the othering––trans and other queer folk, people of color and non-Americans are today’s targets. Oh, and let’s not forget about women. All women. I’m pretty sure it’s just a matter of time before others are added to these growing lists of the “unacceptable.”

I sit in my little brick ranch, the home that I love, the home that’s paid for, I think of my friends and my family, the people I love, and I don’t want to leave, ever. And, there’s a part of me that’s whispering, go, run, go while it’s still not too late. Where would I go? What would I do? I can work anywhere, but how could I start over in an unfamiliar land and leave the life I know and love behind? Especially at my age.

I plan to have a full life ahead of me. I’ve worked hard to get to this time and place in my life and say a “shehecheyanu” more often than prescribed, for me, it’s the best gratitude prayer in the world. I’m in a place in my life where I feel joy almost every day, where I love what I do, and I finally, finally love myself. I’m finally, finally doing the thing I was never brave enough to do, until recently. I’m a writer, a creator. And I won’t waste that gift by staying silent. I’ve been silent for too long.

Life is a gift. Life is tender. Tevye says––not so much in these words––that the Fiddler is a metaphor for survival in a life filled with uncertainty. It’s as precarious as a fiddler on the roof "trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck."

I’m listening for the still, small voice, the wisdom of Grace and good sense to guide me. I’m sitting with it, and I’m praying on it. The thing that’s keeping me balanced is I know deep inside that no matter what happens, I’ll be okay. My spirit can’t be destroyed.

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